Royal Princess Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,777 reviews

The Northern Atlantic became the mid-Atlantic halfway through...

Review for Transatlantic Cruise on Royal Princess
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Traveling Examiner
6-10 Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Sep 2018
Cabin: Balcony

All in all, we really enjoyed it, but Princess would do well to take a few statistics classes.

When we checked in at Southampton, woo, hoo, we’re platinum, you know. This is our eighth Princess Cruise (and could be our last if the keep playing those godawful reworded 70s Love Boat theme-song safety messages - thank GOD they stopped after the first day) so roll on the bennies!

Let’s skid sideways through the special quickie check in lanes and get this party started!!

Cabin Review

Balcony

Cabin BD

Balcony deluxe. Niiiiice roomy shower but the soap, as usual, kept taking headers off the ledge and I hate having to hold the damn thing all the time.

Having a sofa is also nice but it slanted oddly so that you were constantly sliding off it. No upper storage in the room (over the desk - the TV is wall mounted flush across from the bed) which made it feel larger but hard to watch TV from the sofa.

Port Reviews

Rotterdam

Sounds like the Dutch are pissed off.

I couldn’t figure out why, for our first stop the morning after we got on this ship, we didn’t arrive into Rotterdam until noon. Southampton to The Netherlands is a rollicking 250 odd miles... cross the English Channel, hang a left, boom! You’re there.

But...we’re on a boat full of 3,500 jet lagged Americans. At the here’s-how-you-put-a-velcro’ed-life-jacket-on demo, they asked people to cheer for their home country. Oh, hell, yes, buncha Yanks. And all of them dragging their tail feathers from the red eye to get here.

So finally, the noon arrival made sense. Why make our Colonial Cousins cranky by getting into port early and depriving them of primo jet lag shuteye time?

Let’s wander around the North Sea for the morning, entice them into snoozing in (“after all, honey, there’s no reason to get up early...”) and they’ll wake up happy and ready to take the overpriced tours and spend them greenbacks!

Enter the Dutch. As I recall, there’s a certain politician who hasn’t been particularly neighborly to anyone lately. Tariffs, insults, general unpleasantness.

The Scandinavians are nothing if not unfailingly polite. They’re Canadians in Viking hats. Just...do not piss them off.

I think...but this is supposition, mind...they’re a little annoyed.

For the first time (ever), for clearance into the Schengen Area (those European countries with reciprocal visa agreements), we gotta have our passports peered at. Soooo...starting at 7am, everyone outta bed, let’s have a lookit theese pahspohrts, shall wee?

Wilkohmen au The Netherlands!

As we pulled into the shipping lanes (Rotterdam is one of the biggest ports in the world) we saw Dutch windmills!

Wait. Aren’t they supposed to be wood and cute? These are kinda ugly and look like the ones near Tehachapi, California. Giant metal monsters.

So the other nice thing is the Rotterdam port authority arranged for free busses to run almost the entire time the ship was in port from the ship to the city center, to the marketplace then back to the ship. Yaaay we didn’t pay for a tour at this port...we got to see what we wanted for a €2 tip each way. Life is good. We had lunch at a little bistro with free WiFi - all in all, one modest cost day, aside from Sheri’s Donutella shake.

Mini donuts blendered into ice cream and Nutella. It was too much for me.

The next day a sea day, so sleeping in and bingo and no stress.

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